THIS WEEK, AN anti-abortion group called for a meeting with the Minister for Health over concerns about a study into medical outcomes of Irish women who had abortions.

The Pro Life Campaign highlighted the study to claim that the legalisation of abortion in 2018 has led to “adverse consequences” for women that are not being acknowledged.

They claim that the study reveals one in eight Irish women has visited the emergency department after having an abortion.

But is this figure accurate?

The Claim

The Pro Life Campaign claim that one in eight – or 12% – of women in Ireland have visited a hospital emergency department after having an abortion.

An article on the group’s website is headed: “One in Eight Women in Ireland Visited Emergency Department After Abortion“.

It also refers to a study of Irish women carried out between 2019 and 2022, and states that “12% of the women who underwent abortions during this period presented to an emergency department on an unplanned basis”.

Pro Life Campaign Pro Life Campaign

The Evidence

The study referenced in the article called ‘Termination of early pregnancy in Ireland: Review of the first four years of inpatient service at a tertiary maternity unit’, which was published in the Irish Journal of Sociology on 28 May.

The study analysed outcomes for 149 women who had abortions at a single, unnamed maternity hospital in the south of Ireland between 2019 and 2022.

It is a broad study that looks at the experiences of the women, where they came from, whether they had been pregnant before, the length of time that they had been pregnant before seeking an abortion, whether they experienced any complications, and other aspects of their care.

It is not a nationally representative survey, such as those carried out for opinion polls in newspapers or occasionally for advertising purposes, both of which involve carefully weighting responses by categories such as gender, age, or social class.

The findings are instead based on the medical outcomes of a select group of women who attended one hospital over four years; those findings cannot be extrapolated to the wider population to represent the experience of all Irish women.

The study is not even representative of all women who had an abortion during the years 2019 to 2022.

It only looked at women who had what is called a medical abortion – a termination of pregnancy that is induced by taking medication – after they presented to a hospital to receive one (as opposed to doing so in a community setting).

It did not include women who had a medical abortion after being prescribed medication by a GP in a community setting, which is permitted when pregnancies are under nine weeks.

This is crucial, because the study says that 90% of terminations in Ireland are community-based, which is relatively unique by international standards.

Hospital-based terminations of pregnancy – such as those analysed in the study – make up just 10% of abortions in Ireland.

Furthermore, the study excluded those who first presented to the hospital for surgical abortions, which involve the use of instruments and women going under anaesthetic.

It is therefore completely false to suggest that one-in-eight women who had an abortion in Ireland since the procedure was legalised had to go to an emergency department afterwards.

So where did the figure come from?

The Journal contacted the Pro Life Campaign, who referred us to a sample size outlined under ‘Table 4′ of the study, which deals with “complications” that resulted from some abortions.

The section on “complications” describes how some of the women involved in the study required blood transfusions and extended hospital stays after receiving an abortion, while there were also a small number of admissions to high-dependency units.

The group of women who were recorded as suffering “complications” was 34 – the majority of the 149 women did not.

Those 34 women – or 23% of the women in the study – were counted because they sought a medical review after they were discharged from the hospital.

Of those 34 women, 18 involved unplanned presentations by individuals to the emergency department (the other 16 attended for scheduled clinic appointments). 

That is the figure referred to in the claim by the Pro Life Campaign: 18 out of 149 women – equivalent to roughly one in eight, or 12% – made an unplanned presentation to an emergency department after terminating their pregnancy.

The study states that these presentations were “primarily due to concerns regarding infection or heavy/irregular vaginal bleeding”.

In response to the query about its headline, a spokesperson for the Pro Life Campaign said the group was “not referring to the entire female population of Ireland, whether or not they had abortions”.

(At the time of publication, the claim that one-in-eight women in Ireland visited an emergency department after having an abortion still featured in a headline and graphic on the group’s website.)

The group also called for more research and said it “remains to be clarified” whether the findings would be replicated among the wider population.

“It is normal for research studies to obtain data from a specific sample of the population,” the spokesperson said.

“Most media reports, including those in The Journal, do not cover a statistical discussion of how representative they are of the wider population.”

The group highlighted two articles by this publication by way of example, both of which involved nationally representative surveys carried out among the wider population, a contrast to the abortion study which involved a relatively small group of women at one hospital.

The authors of the study concluded that there were “low complication rates” among the women whose abortion procedures were analysed, something that is in keeping with international studies that show that early abortions (ie before 12 weeks) are safe.

It should be noted that in any area of healthcare, complicated outcomes are – because of their nature – more likely to be seen in a hospital setting rather than by a GP in the community.

Rather than suggesting that the complicated outcomes were a cause for concern about abortion services, the study concluded by suggesting there should be more open access to abortion in Ireland, and pointed to the negative impact of the mandatory three-day wait that women must undergo between being certified by a GP and having an abortion.

The Verdict

The Pro Life Campaign claimed that one out of every eight women in Ireland has visited an emergency department after an abortion.

The group also said that “12% of the women who underwent abortions” between 2019 and 2022 made an unplanned visit to an emergency department afterwards.

The figure is based on 18 (or 12%) of 149 women who had abortions at one hospital in the south of the country over a four-year period, whose experiences were analysed as part of a recently published study.

It is not a nationally representative sample, and did not include those who specifically presented to the hospital for surgical abortions or the 90% of women whose terminations take place in a community setting.

In responses to queries from The Journal, the group said it was not referring to the entire population of Ireland, and defended its wording about the study’s overall findings about “women in Ireland” as normal practice by the media.

We therefore rate the claim that one-in-eight women who had abortions in Ireland over a four-year period as FALSE. As per our verdict guide, this means the claim is inaccurate.

The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.